We’re perfectionists over here at Harmonix, and we want to make sure that everyone’s Rock Band experiences are as awesome as they possibly can be. With that in mind, I’m proud to announce that the Rock Band team has finalized a software update for Rock Band 2 on the PlayStation 3 that addresses some common feature requests from our fans. We’ve also added some great new functionality that we think you’ll be excited to try out when the software update arrives this Thursday.

This update wouldn’t be possible without the feedback and suggestions that we receive from everyone in both the Rock Band and PlayStation communities. Everybody here at Harmonix takes your forum posts and suggestions to heart, and we wouldn’t be able to make our games as awesome as they are without all of the feature requests and feedback that we get from you on a daily basis. So from all of us here at Harmonix, thank you, and please keep letting us know what you’d like to see in future updates and games!

This update includes:

“Sort by Stars” in Quickplay. If you hit the “Sort” button on the Song Select screen, you’ll come to a brand new sort that orders songs by the star ratings that you’ve achieved on each song. Each star rating gets a category, as well as an “Unplayed” category for songs that don’t have a star rating recorded. Finally, you can record your progress towards gold starring every song in your library!

Improved “Sort by Stars” fix: Players will not have to beat a previous high score to record a star rating for their songs.

Chord HOPO improvements: If you’ve played The Beatles: Rock Band, you’ll notice much more robust handling of chord hammer-ons and pull-offs. This patch implements those changes in Rock Band 2 to provide a more natural chord hammer-on/pull-off experience.

Rock Band Network Store Support: When the Rock Band Network goes live, select songs will be available for PlayStation 3 users through a new storefront available in game. Stay tuned for more information closer to the launch of RBN!

SingStar Wireless Microphone Support. Rock Band 2 now supports the SingStar Wireless Microphones currently available through Europe! Finally, you can now have a fully wireless Rock Band experience on your PlayStation 3!

We’re extremely happy to be able to finally release this update for the PlayStation 3 version of Rock Band 2. We know many of you are rabid PlayStation rockers, and it’s a priority for us to make sure that everyone gets the best experience playing Rock Band. On behalf of everyone here at Harmonix, we hope you enjoy the new features!

Thank you very much! But while we’re speaking of features from The Beatles: Rock Band to be implemented into Rock Band 2, there are two features I’d really like to see. Those are the three-second countdown after unpausing and the reminder of difficulty level (Warmup, Apprentice, Solid, etc.) per instrument at the difficulty screen (Easy, Medium, Hard, etc.) (So many times, we’ll have to go back and forth between the difficulty screen and the song select screen until we’re sure what difficulty we’re comfortable with — The Beatles: Rock Band fixed this.).

Why not release some wireless mics here in the U.S.? Is there some patent that game companies can’t get around to bring them here? I just don’t understand why I can have everything wireless at this point except a microphone. Do you guys really expect us to import the tech if we want it? This problem has led to my abandon of SingStar and avoidance of all singing in other music games. Please do something about it.

Why did this patch take so much longer than the Xbox 360 version? The Xbox 360 patch has been live for many months now…your loyalties to Microsoft with the patch and your exclusivity with RBN are apparent.

Please never post on PSBlog again unless you plan on announcing parity between the two systems. Harmonix are sell-outs. Take everything they say with a silo’s tonne of salt.

There were a bunch of reasons for why the update came later, but they all revolved around wanting to make sure we didn\’t half-ass the features we were putting in this update.

One example: We wanted to build RBN Store support on the PS3 version that felt right on the PS3 and wasn\’t just a port of what the Xbox 360 store had, and that took time. We also have to test and certify the update across multiple regions and make sure it\’s bug free, which also takes time.

Rest assured, there\’s no platform bias here on our end. We want everybody to be able to rock regardless of platform, and it doesn\’t really benefit us to shortchange anybody.

Why can’t you make it so the songs that all players in a session don’t have won’t even appear in the song selection? It’s annoying when you are playing with someone with only a dozen or so DLC tracks and you have hundreds.

Wow… never let it be said that PS3 players don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. The Xbox fanboys always make us seem like whiny little girls, and I always defended us, but there’s only a few comments above that don’t bash a patch increasing a 13 month old game’s functionality. If you wonder why it took so long for release after the 360 patch, read the comments above. If you were a developer, and you read this, I doubt it would really instill you to rush the patch to market (if at all). Grow up, people.

I’d just like to say that I sincerely appreciate everything that you and all of the wonderful folks at Harmonix have done since the game was released for the PS3 on Oct. 19, 2008! I have been playing the game since then, and was incredibly proud to obtain my very first Platinum Trophy for it in April, 2009! Since that time, I’ve had to create a new account, and I aim to make Rock Band 2 my first Platinum Trophy game once more!

The only thing I can say about RB2 that needs to be in the next patch is to include the 5-second count-down whenever resuming the game from pausing it (via the pause button, or returning from looking at the XMB mid-game). That feature was one of the absolute best features included in The Beatles: Rock Band, and it definitely belongs in RB2!

Again, thank you all for your incredibly hard work and dedication to THE best music video game out there. I love you guys, Harmonix – you’re a shining example of what developers should strive to be when it comes to game creation, support, and interaction with your fans and customers! Thank you!

I’d be excited if we had wireless mics in the USA.
And to those who are getting ready to say “Import them”
No. I shouldn’t have to import them, Sony needs to bring them to North America asap.

As for the next patch…can you make it possible for players to choose whatever instrument they want, like in RB Beatles and Guitar Hero 5?
Sometimes when my friends are over, more than one want to sing or play guitar, I understand that would be a difficult patch to pull off at this time though.

Damn, we waited all these months and the save is still locked!? Man!
I bought a new PS3, I’m not starting a new save file when I have a perfectly good one sitting in my old PS3. Which means I’m not buying any RB songs (haven’t since PS3s patch was neglected) until the save is unlocked.

Thanks for the info. on the update Dan. RB2 is definitely my favorite and most played game on the PS3 so any updates which improve the gameplay experience are a welcome addition. One recommendation for a future update would be for online play. It would be great to have a filter when searching for band members or choosing to be in a band. Such a filter would allow the search engine to pair up members based on ability; so if you are an expert you are not stuck with a beginner or vice-versa (unless you leave the filter blank, where it would pair you the same as now). Also a filter pairing people with DLC would be nice so that if you are joining a band, you are not stuck playing the same songs over and over again because you are paired with people that do not have DLC. Thanks for your time.

Important (for me, at least) question: what about that Rock Band: Japan game, announced AGES AGO? I’d love some j-rock in RB, would gladly import it… Do you guys just give up on this project or it’s still in production?

With this update, the weekly songs being added to the 1,000+ song Rock Band library, new battles tied to DLC, and the imminent release of the Rock Band Network, I think you and your friends will be more than occupied with cool Rock Band things in 2010.

If you manage to do all that, you could also learn how to play a real guitar or learn how to drum! Then you could use those skills to write and record a song for the Rock Band Network, and be famous!

1. Will The Beatles Rock Band (or Rock Band 2) get a patch to output as LPCM 5.1 for those of us with HDMI? After all the work that went into mixing and mastering at 24-bit/96khz, hearing it as Dolby Digital 5.1 was really disapponting.

2. will RBN support 24-bit lossless tracks?

3. does the patch add FSAA or MSAA? many games easily devote an SPU to this, and it would really help on eliminating the irritating aliasing artifacts on vertical camera moves.

4. I bought the Beatles Special Edition from Fry’s so I could play it with my mom over her Thanksgiving visit. She absolutely loved it, and it made her decade. Thanks from her and myself!

6. I was very happy to hear the Green Day release would be rated M. I’ll buy it just on the principle of supporting mature games without censorship. I just hope we get some of Billy’s famed nudity in there as well ;)

2) Being able to play the entire world tour on one difficulty setting. having it switch from medium to hard is frustrating to those of us who can’t play it on hard. The hardest songs of the game at that.

Being able to back up the game save. I am now on my thrid play through due to changing out my HD and my first PS3 dieing. I am pretty sure most of these songs can be purchased through iTunes for .99. We are paying 1.99 for them. It just doesn’t add up.

Why is the locked save not fixed?
This is useless.
My old PS3 recently died and I got a refurb as a replacement. I am almost to scared to play and download Rock Band DLC, for when my new system dies.
This would be no problem if the save-files were linked to the PSN-id, instead of an ancient hardware-lock.
Why did you choose to lock the saves on PS3 and not on 360?

Will there ever be a patch for the in-game chat? When I play with my friend, we can only hear each other through our televisions and not through our headsets. That’s a far more pressing need than any of these fixes, in my opinion. It’s extremely difficult to communicate during a song, because, you know, the music is kind of in the way.

so no fix for the wandering lag/calibration issues? its certainly software related not hardware because the GH van halen demo worked just fine after calibration with the rb2 hardware, but rb2 was still wonky

I just wish we’d get rock band 3 sooner. Didn’t like Lego Rock Band’s campaign mode how they kept asking you after you do a song if you want to do challenge X and then after you finish THAT song they ask you to do another one, and another one, and another one, and then after you select “No I don’t want to do this challenge” it asks you yet again T_T. Hated that.

I need a refresh. New game, better avatars, using our Home Data on the hard drive and letting us use the avatars we design in Playstation Home alone would make me want the next Rock Band, but I’m pretty much as good as I’ll ever get at Rock Band, so I need some new Trophies and I’m not a beatles fan and I don’t want to do the track packs.